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Three decades have passed since approximately 1,700 scientists signed the "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity" highlighting severe environmental problems and trends affecting local and global communities. To reverse the situation, their 1992 Warning argued we need to change our behaviour. In 2017, a larger group issued a second consensus statement warning that the direction and rates of environmental change had worsened and remained unsustainable. Neither document, however, identified "education" as a key strategy in supporting the necessary behavioural changes that could address such trends. With this in mind, in this essay we argue that to avoid imperilling our future and the planet's--and to achieve a just transition to sustainability--environmental education is a cornerstone for the social and environmental changes expected in such "Warnings." We also argue that consensus on our environmental predicaments is not simply a matter for scientists; it must be supported in multiple spheres. This includes the humanities, arts, and social sciences, and wider society. Only then will contemporary calls by organisations such as UNEP and UNESCO that 'environmental education be a core component of all education systems at all levels by 2025', have a chance of gaining the multilateral and multileveled support the situation so urgently requires.

Many sustainability education scholars argue that active, participatory and experimental pedagogies, known as sustainability or ESD pedagogies, provide the most effective strategies for developing learners' understanding, thinking and ability to act for sustainability. However, factors that impact learning are complex and the extent to which some pedagogies are more effective than others for promoting student learning is contested. The work on sustainability pedagogies has tended not to be problematized. This paper interrogates the literature on sustainability pedagogies in initial teacher education to determine the extent to which the current level of evidence supports pedagogical assumptions held by sustainability education scholars. The findings suggest that factors that impact student teacher learning for sustainability require additional exploration in order to draw reliable conclusions and inform pedagogical decisions that can best support the development of prospective teachers' understanding, thinking and ability to employ sustainability pedagogies.

Can community and school gardens help people learn to build social resilience to potential food shortages? We seek to address this question through an examination of the ways in which gardens can teach individual and community resiliency in times of emergency, pockets of food insecurity, and the challenges presented by climate change. We focus on the role gardens play in providing access to food and building resilience amongst school-aged children and young adults. A larger Australian PhD thesis is analyzed to provide insights to assist educators, particularly in the policy arena, who are seeking to engage with, or who already engage with, young learners in community and school gardens. While the focus is on the Australian context, we argue that our findings have international relevance.

In this paper I reflect on a key challenge facing the field as we move into the next 50 years, that of our prioritizing of the individual over the social or the common. Through examining a number of environmental education activities, a discussion of their effects in shaping individuals as environmental citizens is undertaken. While this is necessary work, it is limited in scope. I conclude by arguing for a new way forward for the field, one that is more clearly and explicitly focused on the complex functioning of power and the mechanisms of power, including the State, and how we might educate our students to facilitate political and social change. Without this, we will not be able to achieve the rapid social and environmental change required if we are to mitigate against and adapt to the effects of climate change.

This paper reports on a study undertaken to identify the strategies and models used to facilitate curriculum change within teacher education institutions. Findings indicate three main approaches, which we name the "resource development", "action research" and "contextual change" models. A new model that combines the best features of each is proposed. In this paper we provide a brief overview of the three models, a rationale for the new model being proposed, and a discussion of the systems theory concepts underpinning the model. It is our contention that the Mainstreaming Change model provides a structure for change to occur simultaneously at a number of levels within a teacher education system. We conclude by discussing some issues that may facilitate or limit the effectiveness of the model in practice. (Contains 4 figures.)

This article reports on the fourth stage of an evolving study to develop a systems model for embedding education for sustainability (EfS) into preservice teacher education. The fourth stage trialled the extension of the model to a comprehensive state-wide systems approach involving representatives from all eight Queensland teacher education institutions and other key policy agencies and professional associations. Support for trialling the model included regular meetings among the participating representatives and an implementation guide. This article describes the first three stages of developing and trialling the model before presenting the case study and action research methods employed, four key lessons learned from the project, and the implications of the major outcomes for teacher education policies and practices. The Queensland-wide, multi-site case study revealed processes and strategies that can enable institutional change agents to engage productively in building capacity for embedding EfS at the individual, institutional, and state levels in preservice teacher education. Collectively, the project components provide a system-wide framework that offers strategies, examples, insights, and resources that can serve as a model for other states and/or territories wishing to implement EfS in a systematic and coherent fashion. [Paper presented at the 18th AAEE Biennial Conference--Sustainability, Smart Strategies for the 21st Century.]

The first research symposium, organised in conjunction with the Australian Association for Environmental Education (AAEE) biennial conference, began with a dialogue between scholars at three different academic career stages. As we all entered the field at different periods in its development, the first part of our presentation and this article provide our perspectives on the context, approaches and issues that characterised the field at the time we became involved in environmental education (EE) and EE research. The second part of this article presents the lessons we have learnt from EE research, and where we see the field headed in the future. [Paper presented at the 18th AAEE Biennial Conference--Sustainability, Smart Strategies for the 21st Century.]

The idea and implementation of learning communities are gaining favour in higher education institutions. In particular, there are a number of successful examples to emerge of the application of the Community of Practice (CoP) framework proposed by Wenger [(1998). "Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity." Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press] for fostering a learning environment for academics around their teaching practice. In this paper, we describe and reflect on the efficacy of a CoP process that was implemented within our university. The purpose of this CoP was to provide a space for academics to focus on assessment practices for first-year courses and identify opportunities for professional development in this area. For a variety of reasons detailed in the paper, the efficacy of this CoP was limited, and we conclude that in the current higher education environment in Australia, success with CoP approaches to improve learning and teaching outcomes may prove limited.

Purpose: This paper aims to argue that substantive changes are required in both curricula and pedagogical practice in higher education institutions to challenge dominant epistemologies and discourses and to unsettle current ways of thinking about, and acting in relation to, the environment. Central to such a shift, it is argued, is the need for higher education curricula to be interdisciplinary and for pedagogical practices to work to build capacities in students for critical and reflective thinking. Design/Methodology/Approach: In this paper, a case study of our reflections is offered on a subject designed to promote capacities in students for critical and reflective thinking via an interdisciplinary approach. The paper uses data from student reflective essays and student course evaluations to make an argument for the success of this approach. Findings: Genuine transformative learning can occur within a constructivist informed pedagogical approach to teaching for sustainability. Research Limitations/Implications: Research implications are that genuine transformation can occur in students' thinking processes (which the paper argues is critical for effective education in sustainability) with appropriately designed courses in higher education. Practical Implications: More effective environmental actors and thinkers, who can critically engage with the complexity of environmental problems. Social Implications: Social implications include a more effective and socially just higher education for sustainability Originality/Value: The authors know of no other narrative that addresses attempts to educate for sustainability using this approach.

Pre-service teacher education institutions are large and complex organisations that are notoriously difficult to change. One factor is that many change efforts focus largely on individual pre-service teacher educators altering their practice. We report here on our experience using a model for effecting change, which views pre-service teacher education institutions and educators as a part of a much broader system. We identified numerous possibilities for, and constraints on, embedding change, but focus only on two in this article: participants' knowledge of change strategies and their leadership capacities. As a result of our study findings and researcher reflections, we argue that being a leader in an academic area within pre-service teacher education does not equate to leadership knowledge or skills to initiate and enact systems-wide change. Furthermore, such leadership capacities must be explicitly developed if education for sustainability is to become embedded in pre-service teacher education.

Teacher education is widely recognized as a key strategy that is yet to be effectively utilized to embed environmental education and/or education for sustainability in schools. This paper reports on a research study that examined a range of pre-service teacher education initiatives, both in Australia and internationally, that were seeking to reorient teacher education towards environmental sustainability. This paper reports on six factors utilized across the initiatives that were critical to their success. These were (1) the nature and length of funding arrangements; (2) the range and quality of partnerships and networks; (3) the curriculum focus and the teaching and learning processes used; (4) the nature of, and incentives for, participant engagement; (5) the level at which a change was being sought; and (6) the use of evaluation as a tool for learning and ongoing improvement. This paper discusses why and how each of these six factors proved critical and explores the implications for initiatives seeking to reorient teacher education towards environmental sustainability.

This article presents a discussion on a study undertaken by academics within the Griffith School of Environment, Brisbane, Australia that sought to explore the potential of an Indigenised curriculum to attract and retain Indigenous students, and thereby facilitate greater participation of Indigenous students in science. The article highlights the need for staff to be both reflective and reflexive about the limitations their particular knowledge systems may impose on Indigenous ways of knowing and knowledge systems. The article also acknowledges the need for professional development opportunities for staff prior to any attempts towards Indigenisation of the curriculum.

Participation in networks, both as a concept and process, is widely supported in environmental education as a democratic and equitable pathway to individual and social change for sustainability. However, the processes of participation in networks are rarely problematized. Rather, it is assumed that we inherently know how to participate in networks. This assumption means that participation is seldom questioned. Underlying support for participation in networks is a belief that it allows individuals to connect in new and meaningful ways, individuals can engage in making decisions and in bringing about change in arenas that affect them and that they will be engaging in new, non-hierarchical and equitable relationships. In this paper, we problematize participation in networks. As an example, we use research into a decentralized network--described as such in its own literature--the Queensland Environmentally Sustainable Schools Initiative Alliance in Australia--to argue that while network participants were engaged and committed to participation in this network, "old" forms of top-down engagement and relationships needed to be unlearnt. This paper thus proposes that for participation in decentralized networks to be meaningful, new learning about how to participate needs to occur.

In this paper I employ Foucault's notion of governmentality to reflect on a debate that occurred in the pages of this journal some 10 years ago. I argue that their exchanges indicate ways in which various positions are engaged in a struggle for dominance in this field, and how particular strategies are used to legitimate and maintain these positions. My purpose is not to propose a new orthodoxy--or even to critique those we have--but rather to raise questions about how the unquestioned "that-which-is" of orthodoxies comes to be, and their effects. I also suggest that as environmental educators and researchers, we need to work harder to unsettle more often the taken-for-granted in environmental education so that we remain alert to our own easy acceptance of orthodoxies. Without this, we risk our exhortations to those we seek to educate--to think critically, to question assumptions, and so forth--becoming empty rhetoric if we are not practising these ourselves--examining our own, as well as others', assumptions and practices. (Contains 4 notes.)

Networks are increasingly recognised as advantageous when creating and embedding cultural change within organisations. This paper explores and problematises ideas around networks for education for sustainability (EfS), specifically in relation to the implementation of the Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative (AuSSI), a national, whole-school approach to EfS. In three Australian states--New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland--AuSSI has been implemented in different ways. In examining the use of products, facilitators and networks to embed initiatives such as AuSSI in Australian schools, we propose a "continuum of cultural change strategies" as a framework for thinking about each of these approaches to creating organisational and cultural change for sustainability. We anticipate that such a framework may assist where choices need to be made in relation to the kinds of capacity building processes that might best achieve "deep and wide" change within schools hoping to engender significant cultural change. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

Initial teacher education provides a strategic opportunity for ensuring that all teachers are ready and able to teach for sustainability when they begin their teaching careers. However, it is widely recognized that this strategy has not been used to its full potential. Efforts in education for sustainable development (ESD) at this level have tended to engage with prospective teachers and teacher educators already interested in this area of learning--preaching mostly to the converted. This paper reports on a study undertaken by the Australian Research Institute of Education for Sustainability (ARIES) for the Australian Government Department of the Environment and Heritage, which sought to appraise the models of professional development underpinning a range of initial teacher education initiatives. Its intention was to learn from these experiences and identify effective models for mainstreaming ESD in pre-service teacher education. Three main models of professional development were identified: the Collaborative Resource Development and Adaptation Model, the Action Research Model and the Whole-of-System Model. The paper concludes by arguing that a systemic approach that engages the whole of the teacher education system is necessary if ESD is to be successfully mainstreamed in initial teacher education. (Contains 3 figures.)

Teacher education is widely recognised as a key strategy that is yet to be effectively utilised to embed environmental education and/or education for sustainability in schools. This paper reports on a research study that examined a range of pre-service teacher education initiatives, both in Australia and internationally, that were seeking to reorient teacher education towards environmental sustainability. This paper reports on six factors utilised across the initiatives that were critical to their success. These were (1) the nature and length of funding arrangements; (2) the range and quality of partnerships and networks; (3) the curriculum focus and the teaching and learning processes used; (4) the nature of, and incentives for, participant engagement; (5) the level at which a change was being sought; and (6) the use of evaluation as a tool for learning and ongoing improvement. This paper discusses why and how each of these six factors proved critical and explores the implications for initiatives seeking to reorient teacher education towards environmental sustainability. (Contains 2 notes.)

We are living in an era of market-driven, globalised economies characterised by reduced public investments in what, until now, have been considered public goods and services. In Australia and elsewhere, education, and higher education in particular, has seen steady declines in government funding. This has prompted universities to become much more entrepreneurial and to seek out new funding opportunities to support their teaching and research activities. This paper reflects on the personal and professional dilemmas and challenges we faced as two early career environmental education researchers who were commissioned to undertake research for a private corporation. As a result of issues raised during this process, we engaged in a critical refection of our perceptions and feelings about our involvement in the project. In essence, dilemmas and challenges centred around two issues: (1) control/ownership of the research; and (2) the clash between corporate and university values. This paper explores these issues and suggests that greater mindfulness on the part of individual researchers as well as the development of better university-corporate partnership processes and protocols might provide useful starting points for overcoming such dilemmas and for moving forward with university-corporate research partnerships.